Learn To Ring!
- Church: St Martin of Tours
- Bells: 10 bells, 16-0-02 cwt
- Contact: our contact form
- Sundays: 09:20–10:00 & (3rd Sun) 17:50–18:30 check if quarter peal attempt
- Practices: Mondays 19:45–21:30
Bell Ringing is great fun! There are about 40,000 bellringers in the UK, and 40,000 people can’t be wrong! With that many ringers, it’s a great hobby socially too. No matter where you go in the UK, you’re never far from a tower with bells and a band of ringers who will welcome you – including the pub afterwards!
At St Martins, Epsom, we are always pleased to welcome visitors at our weekly practice nights. Please come up to the ringing room (when the bells have stopped) to see what we do or if you are interested in learning to ring.
Initial bellringing training takes several weeks, after which learners can begin to ring with the rest of the band.
Ringers come from all walks of life, and we can teach anybody over 10 years old!
Benefits
- It is FREE!
- Whole family activity (over 10’s)
- Excellent exercise, both physical and mental
- Service to the community and church
- Helps with coordination and concentration
- Excellent stress relief – you have to concentrate 100%!
- Sociable activity. Once trained you can go and ring in most other towers.
- Fantastic teamwork activity – you ring as a band and interact with different people.
Who Can Learn to Ring?
- Most people aged between 10 and 70 (who can get up the stairs to the ringing chamber).
- You should be ringing a bell on your own within 4 weeks.
- You never know it all, there’s always something new to learn.
- Ringing is multi-denominational. There are ringers from all religious and ethnic backgrounds.
- You do not need to be musical or strong!
How We Train:
- Ringing can appear challenging, so we train each individual action and then link them together, building your bell control with each step.
- To start with your trainer has 99% control of the bell and slowly passes that control to you, as you get used to it.
- Each new step is demonstrated and you are walked through it without pull the rope before trying it for real.
- All under very close supervision from an experienced trainer.
- After learning to control the bell you move on to ringing in groups and then learning “methods” (our music).
- You never stop learning!